


Proverbs 14:12

by scytherei



Category: Fantrolls - Fandom
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Gore, Moral Ambiguity, Platonic Ships, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scytherei/pseuds/scytherei
Summary: Commission for maritimemelancholy





	Proverbs 14:12

로마는 하루아침에 이루어진 것이 아니다 -- 'Rome wasn't built in one morning.'

Sure, maybe, but these days you don't think it's getting built at all. Every step you take forward feels like 8 steps back and from the beginning the 'better' you've acted, the worse you've felt. It's a problem, it weighs heavy on your temper. You feel closer to snapping with each ticking second than you did at your worst and the more you think about it the more conflicted you feel-- the more you wonder if it's really worth it at all. Sure, the body count is lower, but, well, now you're thinking the victim quality is lower, too. 

See, originally, you'd had a purpose. You only attacked people who attacked you first, only killed people who deserved it. Never kids and rarely anyone who seemed to have it worse-- there's a difference between malice and a misfortune of time and place. You'd recognised that at one point. Your whole motivation was getting the vocal majority that wanted you dead to leave you the hell alone, and yeah, maybe this was an overreaction, but to be fair, you'd never had the dis-privilege of facing discrimination based on your hue before, let alone been outright told it was cullable (though later, you'd find, you were perfectly within legal parametres-- fact of the matter was, trolls are violent sorts to begin with and you are a walking excuse). Your first kill was pure panic-- sloppy work, too. You'd started with a knife and what you'd thought were empty threats and ended covered in two different shades of blood, more of it yours than theirs. 

You'd started out 8 and some change with soundless distress and sticky green smears on your face and the smell of sharp metal in your nose. Panic in your stomach because part of you still cared and worried that the blue toned corpse at your feet would land you in jail. A gaping ache in your chest because you'd never killed anyone, never even THOUGHT about killing anyone, could barely muster the willpower to chase off the rodents terrorising your garden.

You'd definitely started out hating it. But it turns out, everything gets easier if you practice it enough.

엎질러진 물이다 -- 'No use crying over spilt water.'

After a while, you started telling yourself that like a goddamn mantra. What's done is done, don't worry about it, keep moving. You figured out people didn't care as much about missing highbloods as the stuff they teach you in schoolfeeding sessions would lead you to believe. You figured out people cared even less when the highbloods in question were bastards, and you figured out, most importantly, that Alternia is absolutely FULL of bastards. Most trolls don't come with soft insides. They come with bastard filling and bastard coating decorating a bastard-flavoured shell. That made getting rid of them easier-- you don't feel so bad when you feel like you're doing a service to the community. Eventually you don't feel bad at all, and you guess that makes you a bit of a bastard, too.

That was fine by you-- if killing you became a service to the community, maybe someone else would do you a favour. In retrospect, you think you might have forgotten the difference between happiness and misery at this point. It's not until you almost get your wish that you figure out the difference again.

과부 설움은 홀아비가 안다 -- "A widower knows a widow’s sorrow."

Turns out, misery loves company, and the more company you have, the more miserable you are. 

You'd taken Garuda under your wing and failed her spectacularly.

You'd made enough friends you gave a shit about only to find them vanishing without a trace.

Syrinx was more of an employer than a friend per se-- you hated him about as much as you liked him.

And Luke?

...Well. You'd never admit it, but you could write a novel about Luke Fucking Wilson (starting with how you're half sure that's his actual middle name). 

Yeah, despite the fact that you'd 1000% expected him to drop off the planet both literally and figuratively within a few months, he'd somehow managed to be the most stable presence in your life. He'd hated you but messaged you almost weekly, sometimes more, like clockwork, for reasons you couldn't begin to fathom. Truthfully, it's for this reason you didn't always elect to reply-- you could never tell if he was fucking with you, antagonising you, or winding up for a lecture. Maybe it was a drunk dial. Maybe a booty call. Hell if you knew or cared-- his eventual claim that he actually Gave A Shit was one of the few possibilities that'd never ended up crossing your mind. You'd been so convinced he wanted you as dead as everyone else that him agreeing to heal you and actually NOT turning it into a backstabbing betrayal like you'd expected and secretly kind of hoped was the most shocking news of the sweep-- enough so that you actually started replying to his messages. In earnest, too-- you'd toned down your sarcastic insults to dry but mostly honest responses before you'd even noticed. 

Eventually, you'd even developed a sense of worry for the guy-- yes, you were absolutely going soft, but maybe that was the goal-- despite your more violent of denials. These days, the guy looked like he only ate once in a blue moon and slept even less. Death by sickness or starvation was seeming more likely than murder at this point, if only marginally, and maybe it's just because he's one of the two people you still feel comfortable speaking frankly with, but that bothered you to some extent. Enough that you'd started making up excuses to dump off extra produce on him-- sometimes more than extra-- just to make sure he didn't drop dead. 

...But also enough that you preferred keeping him at arms length, at best, because caring about someone like that's opinion was asking for trouble. Pushing people away was what you did best, besides literal backstabbing.

원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 잇다 -- Even monkeys fall from trees.

That said, you're back to the present and out of your head, and slowly surely coming to terms with the fact that you'd fucked up, badly, in more ways than one. You're so dissociated at this point that you're having trouble putting things together in a cohesive timeline. How'd you get here, anyway? You have to focus to remember. 

The air is the humid and hot soup of the warm season, permeated with a harsh metallic stench you know better than you should. You feel sharp rocks grinding against your patella and dirt stinging your wounds. There's the uncomfortable, familiar sticky pressure of raw viscera under your claws. You open your good eye, let your vision come into focus, and survey the damage.

The troll in front of you in in one piece, but only barely, laid out in an abstract heap about spitting distance from where you'd ended up kneeling. Their left arm is distorted in an unnatural bend over their shoulder-- you remember the sicking snap it'd made when you'd grappled them. From there your eyes travel laterally to the laceration over their throat-- not deep enough for a decapitation, but deep enough to leave bone visible if you squint. You scan downwards to the matching wound on their abdomen, where the force of being thrown against the ground had left their entrails oozing from the gash, slightly torn where you can see just the beginnings of a scratch near the centre. You could probably figure out what they had for lunch if you looked closely enough. Thinking about it makes you tempted to lose yours-- you already taste bile, regardless. You hear a gag behind you, and your head snaps around as you remember that you aren't actually alone.

Luke has his mouth covered, looking at you with some cocktail of emotions that you can't quite comprehend-- human features are just subtly different, you know, and their body language is just a bit more complex-- but are fairly sure you don't like. You think you catch notes of disgust layered over a thick foundation of distress and nausea and something else you can't identify. As you rise to your feet, you still feel a pounding pressure in your temples telling you your eyes are still tinted out, and that adds a dash of wariness-- but not quite fear-- to the mix. Personally, you just feel apprehension. You fucked up, again. Someone trusted you, again. Turns out you're still a murderous bitch, so you've disappointed someone, again.

So, you do what any sane, logical adult would do in this situation. You turn tail and run like you've got hell on your heels. Knowing you, you just might.

눈에서 멀어지면, 마음에서도 멀어진다 -- "Out of sight, out of mind."

...Yeah, right.


End file.
